`Save Our Sealife` Idea Is Good, But Doesn`t Belong In Constitution

Since ``Save Our Homes`` won massive voter approval, why not try ``Save Our Sealife``? Maybe because a good case can be made that, however desirable, it doesn`t belong in the Florida Constitution.

On Nov. 3, Florida voters adopted two ``citizen initiative`` state constitutional amendments, placed on the ballot after more than the required 363,000 voters signed petitions in favor. ``Eight is Enough`` imposes an eight-year term limit on many Florida politicians. ``Save Our Homes`` limits home property tax assessment increases to 3 percent a year.

The success of these grassroots efforts to go around the Legislature and rewrite the state Constitution -- after several expensive and time-consuming failures -- inevitably is inspiring other groups and individuals to launch citizen-initiated campaigns of their own.

Just on Election Day, supporters of the ``Save Our Sealife`` amendment collected 202,000 signatures out of the 422,000 needed to put the amendment on the ballot in November 1994. ``Save Our Sealife`` has a worthy goal -- banning all entangling fish gill nets from Florida`s inland and coastal waters. Smaller castnets -- 500 sq. ft. and below -- would still be allowed.

Use of huge gill nets by commercial fishermen, and smaller ones by amateurs, has caused a sharp falloff in certain fish species, such as seatrout and mullet. Gill nets, by their unselective nature, operate as mass killing machines, destroying lots of protected fish species, plus some turtles, porpoises, manatees and even birds.

The Florida Legislature and Marine Fisheries Commission have repeatedly refused to ban gill nets. So it`s understandable that supporters of the net ban would try to use the citizen initiative process to go around these political roadblocks.

In theory, citizen initiative is an important safety valve for public dissent and frustration with government and a vital check and balance on legislative or regulatory inertia. It can be democracy in its purest form -- true ``power to the people.``

There`s only one problem: A ban on gill nets, however justified, is not the kind of issue that should be part of the state Constitution, the basic document of state government. The Constitution should establish the structure and functions of government and the rights of individuals. It should not be clogged with matters that properly should be addressed either in state law or in departmental regulations.

One reason Florida voters totally rewrote the state Constitution in 1968 was to eliminate hundreds of pages of extraneous material enacted in 151 amendments over 83 years. The 1968 Constitution now runs to 54 pages of tiny type, including a 17-page index. That`s plenty long enough.

The fast progress of the Save Our Sealife petition drive should put strong pressure on lawmakers and the Marine Fisheries Commission. They should head off adoption of more constitutional clogging by passing a legal or regulatory ban on net fishing on their own.

Long-term, lawmakers also ought to consider asking voters to amend the Constitution to allow citizen-initiated state laws, permitted in some other states such as California, to avoid having to amend the Constitution when a new law is all that`s needed.